Oh brother!

I have an older brother called Richard who as you would imagine made my life a misery when I was younger, such was his role in the family.

I was the youngest, the golden child if you will, and he was now the former golden child, toppled the moment that I came on the scene. To him, therefore, I was fair game and that was something that I just had to live with which, of course, I did. 

This is because I learned very quickly that being a sibling is a game. Knowing how to get my brother mad or into trouble with our parents was all a part of it (the best part to be honest) and the rules, well they tended to be made up as the years progressed.

The thing is though, is that whilst I was fair game to my big brother, I wasn’t to anybody else and if anyone even tried to cause me problems my brother would be the first to step in and sort the problem out - I might have been a nuisance, but I was ‘family’ and that meant something. It still does.

This week my eldest sons have visited us in Bahrain and whilst we have all loved seeing them and spoiling them rotten, it is my youngest son, who lives here with us by himself who enjoyed this time the most of all. 

This is because he was allowed to be a little brother again, even for just a short time, and it renewed his sense of identity and gave him a much-needed confidence boost. 

He may have been teased, sat on, not allowed to sit in the best seat or to watch his favourite programmes on TV, but that didn’t matter at all because at the same time he was supported, helped with his homework, had his questions about the world answered and, most importantly, loved in a way that only brothers can. 

Friends come and go, but family is family.

As parents it is sometimes easy to forget the needs of our children as we busy ourselves with the other things in life that needlessly distract us, but seeing my sons all together again this week reminded me of the importance of remembering our children as individuals AND as a collective whole. 

I had forgotten how important it is for our children to be around each other because they learn so much from those relationships. I had also forgotten the security that siblings give to each other and how that security turns into self-confidence and trust. 

Finally, though I remembered that through all of the tears, tantrums, broken tempers, fights, squabbles and snot there is an awful lot of laughter, collective ridiculousness, solidarity and love, plus an unbreakable connection that bonds siblings through shared experiences.

After we had waved the boys off and were sad for a while, my youngest son showed me a picture of him and his brothers larking around in the sea. He started giggling which made us all giggle because that was a shared memory and even though our family is many miles away, we know that they are never very far away.